Donetsk residents stand in line for their pensions at an office of the Donetsk People's Republic Central Bank. (RIA Novosti/Igor Maslov) / RIA Novosti

Kiev is pocketing the money it has to transfer for social payments in war-torn areas, the rebel leaders said, calling on Germany and France to put pressure on President Poroshenko. Ukrainian officials claim they cannot transfer the pensions.

“We are calling on you as the guarantors [of the Minsk
agreement] to use leverage on the Ukrainian leadership and make
it follow [the deal] and resume social payments to the citizens
of Donbass, to demand from the Ukrainian side that they stop
ignoring the Minsk agreement,” Igor Plotnitsky and Aleksandr
Zakharchenko wrote in an address to the German and French
leaders.

The complaint was voiced
in a joint letter they sent to Chancellor Angela Merkel and
President Francois Hollande, who co-sponsored and endorsed the
Minsk agreement in February last year.

The quarrel over pension
money adds to the many points of contention between the Ukrainian
government and the rebel forces in the east. In November last
year, Kiev announced it would not pay any social benefits in
rebel-held areas as part of its strategy to blockade them. But in
February it pledged to revoke the decision during negotiations in
Minsk, which produced a ceasefire agreement between the
government and the rebel forces.

But according to the
self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Kiev is
not willing to deliver on its commitment and is not transferring
the money it owes to the pensioners.

“The Ukrainian leadership
is… continuing the blockade, including that of the Donbass
banking system. It is stealing the pensions of more than a
million people, leaving them with nothing to live
on,”the entities’
heads said.

Ukrainian officials say
paying the pension is impossible.

“We physically cannot do
it. I stress that the government is ready to deliver on its
obligations in full, but we physically cannot do
it,”Kiev military
campaign spokesman Andrey Lysenko told TV channel 112.

He cited the damage done
to the offices of the state-owned bank responsible for delivering
the pension as the main stumbling block. Rebel officials said
most of the offices are in working order and ready to process the
payments.

“The offices of the banks
and the pension fund are fine. They have the necessary equipment
and staff. Nobody has left even though Kiev has been trying to
lure them away,”Denis Pushilin, a senior official in
the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic told RIA Novosti,
inviting Lysenko to come and see for himself.

The Ukrainian Justice
Minister Pavel Petrenko said in an interview that the pensions
would only be paid after Kiev regains control over all the
Donetsk and Lugansk regions: “When we are in power there and
can ensure that the money gets through to the people.” He
added that the alternative would be for pensioners to leave
rebel-held areas and apply to the proper social security
authority.

“We have no technical
capability to send the money into the occupied
territories,”he
stated on the Ukraina TV channel.

Both the spokesman and
the minister were commenting on last week’s ruling by a Kiev
court, which said the November presidential decree ordering the
payment of the pensions to be suspended was
unconstitutional.

“Pensions and social
benefits from the state must be paid to all citizens who are
entitled to them according to the Ukrainian constitution and laws
in the entire territory of Ukraine as recognized by the
authorities, regardless of where the persons entitled to such
pensions and benefits live,”the ruling said.

The Ukrainian pension
fund lacks some $3.4 billion it needs to pay all due pensions,
Social Policy Minister Pavel Rozenko told the First National TV
channel.

“Speaking plainly, the
fund is bankrupt and without aid from the state this financial
institution will not be able to continue to
exist,”he
said.

Amid the quarrel with
Kiev over pension money, the Donetsk government said it would
start paying pensions in April. This would require some $33
million each month and would provide retirement income for some
500,000 people, the self-proclaimed republic’s pension fund
reported. The Lugansk government had intended to start paying
pensions on April 3.